- Lily -
I leaned back and pulled my hands into my lap again.
He shook his head and stared at the floor between his polished shoes. “It wasn’t enough,” he said before looking up. “Everything you’ve been through…I could’ve prevented it all. I could’ve protected you better.”
“I know.” I nodded. “But I didn’t give you the chance, and for that I have only myself to blame.”
“How long?” he asked. “How long did you suffer at his hands?”
I wanted to end the conversation. The pain in his eyes—in his voice—it was too much. But I could tell he needed help making sense of this. I could tell he was hurt that I hadn’t opened up to him before. “It’s hard to say.”
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“For as long as you’ve known me, anyway.”
His shoulders drooped.
“He was a functioning alcoholic when I was a kid,” I said. “I never saw anything but his fun side for a long time.”
“What changed?”
I turned my palms up. “I don’t know. His brain? It’s hard to say. All I know is he got angrier and more violent until his fun moods disappeared altogether.”
“Why didn’t your mom leave him?”
“She did.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Or at least, that’s what she was trying to do the day she crashed.”
He covered his mouth with his hand.
“She just didn’t get very far.”
His dark eyes stayed on me.
“She was a mess at that point, though. She’d been consumed by fear for so long she was almost unrecognizable.”
“So once she was gone, he set his sights on you.”
“Not right away.” I picked at my nail polish. “He mourned for a long time without ever laying a finger on me. Maybe a full year and a half. Which was uncomfortable since I blamed him for what happened.”
“And then?”
I scrunched my face. “Isn’t that enough? Do you really need me to relive more of this than—?”
“No,” he said, raising his palms. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around this, just trying to figure out how I could’ve failed you so badly.”
“Sebastian.”
“What?”
“You didn’t fail me. All I needed from you was love, and you always gave me more than enough.”
“Then why did you leave?” he asked. “Why didn’t you let me help you? I could’ve been there for you like I was after your mom died.”
I thought of Papa Rod down the hall and wondered about the future. It was impossible to guess how things would go after this conversation ended, impossible to know if Sebastian would still want me in his life.
But his father was forever.
And if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that Hector Rodriguez was a good man, a man who’d risked everything for me. So the last thing I was prepared to do was blame him for my mistakes and risk harming the relationship he had with his eldest son.
Besides, I was too old to shirk responsibility. Not to mention too exhausted to make any more excuses. So I needed to make it clear to Sebastian that my mistakes were the only ones that deserved to be on trial here.
“Well?”
“Because I was scared, Sebastian. I was scared that my secret would destroy your family, that it would destroy us. That it would destroy the way you looked at me.”
He ran a hand through his disheveled hair.
“How could I hide all that stuff from you and then ask you to pick up the pieces after everything came to a head?”
“But—”
“I would’ve crumbled if I even saw you,” I said. “I would’ve crumbled.”
He squeezed his chin in his hands.
“And I needed to be strong for me and Paige. I needed to put distance between me and the unforgiveable thing I did.”
He furrowed his brow.
“I couldn’t go back to that address, to that kitchen. I became a different person in a split second, Sebastian. A bad person. A criminal. I became undeserving of you overnight.”
“That’s not true.”
“You say that now, but it was hard enough when my mom died. Don’t you remember? How the kids at school pitied you because you were stuck dating the tragic girl with the special needs sister whose dad was the town drunk?”
“That thought never crossed my mind.”
“Bullshit.”
“All I cared about was you. I never gave a fuck about any of those kids.”
“I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean their jeers didn’t wear on you. And it only would’ve gotten worse. You would’ve been the guy stuck dating the poor orphan girl with the—”
“I never felt stuck with you.”
“Teachers would’ve started coming up to you asking you about my mental state and enquiring about the ongoing investigation and—”
“Do you think that didn’t happen anyway?!” he asked, raising his voice. “My dad was the chief of police, Lily. Everybody thought it was within their rights to interrogate me.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“And I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea. I couldn’t even tell them if you were okay.”
I swallowed.
“Instead of the poor guy stuck with the tragic girl I became the poor guy who was so tragic even the tragic girl abandoned him. Do you have any idea how shitty that felt? I never gave a fuck about any of those people, and you left me alone with them.”
My bottom lip shuddered.
“I had nothing then. Do you get that?” he asked, waving his hands in the air. “Nothing. I’d pinned all my hopes on you. I’d invested all my love, all my time, all my dreams…and then you disappeared into thin air.”
I took a deep breath.
“I felt like a fucking lunatic. I felt like I must’ve been crazy to ever think the things I thought about what we had, to think we were solid, to think nothing could come between us.”
“I was lonely, too, Sebastian. I was—”
“But you were lonely by choice,” he said, pointing at me. “You didn’t have to be, and when you chose loneliness for yourself, you sentenced me to the same.”
My nose burned as my eyes watered.
“I was the one who got a sentence after your dad’s death. Me.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“I didn’t even know if you were alive, Lily! You didn’t even let me know you were alive.”
I leaned forward and put my head in my hands, the weight of his frustration weighing on my shoulders like a sack of wet sand. “I wasn’t,” I whispered finally.
“What?”
I sat up. “I wasn’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I wasn’t alive,” I said. “Not in any way that counts.”
He shook his head.
“Really. I wasn’t. Not until you stepped up to my table that day at The Atrium, and I remembered what it was like to feel conscious of my breath, my pulse, my temperature.”
“Lily.”
“I was existing before then, sure, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was alive.”
His lips twitched.
“Just surviving.”
His stared at me.
“It’s not the same.”
“I know,” he said, his dark eyes searching mine.
I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I hoped he could see I had nothing left, that I’d laid it all out for him, that the ball was in his court. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
He stood up and put the picture frame back in its place.
I cocked my head, wishing I could read his mind, wishing I could at least know whether I’d said enough to convince him that he wasn’t to blame for any of this. “Now what?” I asked, softly.
He sighed. “I need time.”